Arthur
Rhoda Levine and Everett Aison
New York Review Books Children’s Collection
When dreamy, thoughtful, Arthur misses the call from his fellow birds to join them and fly South, it seems he’s in for a sorry time spending the winter alone in New York City. Arthur however, is of a determined nature. He finds a home, or two, an old man to supply him daily breakfast crumbs and things to amuse himself with. Observing the rush hour comings and goings morning and evening from his first ‘ perfect solution to his housing problem’ – grating in the pavement – being one of his occupations.

“New Yorkers are changing shape,” he comments when everyone dons their winter gear against the chilly winds … “People can be entertaining.” … “I am growing. I am learning. I am an acute observer.” And assuredly he is, especially when yogi-like, he stands on his head to help himself think and ultimately find a permanent home.
“Find Arthur.” Is his solution to the potential boredom issue: a solo hide-and-seek game played according to strict rules he invents using the steam issuing from a manhole cover: a great pastime for a private bird like himself.
Highlights of his time include the icy rainfall (Arthur becomes a poet over this), followed by the coming and going of a huge evergreen tree in the square. Arthur takes a holiday among the green branches. Then come the Christmas lights adorning the same and delighting all around, but gone after four days, only to be followed rapidly by snowfall. What fun this provides our feathered pal,

although the flying snowballs are no competition. “White balls are low on flying power,” Arthur decides about the snowballs that, unlike him, always fall to earth.

With the melting of the snow, Arthur feels a lightening of his heart as the days gradually grow warmer until finally, there they are once again: his migratory friends returned from southern climes. But do they want to hear all about Arthur’s cold and wonderful time? Oh dear me no: “Think what joy you missed.” they comment to Arthur as …

We leave Arthur as we found him riding the roads of Central Park , ‘gazing at himself in the taillight of a hansom cab. He was enjoying himself immensely.’
Altogether enchanting and brilliantly witty is Rhoda Levine’s bird’s eye view of a New York City winter from the perspective of one experiencing it for the first time. Arthur is something of a philosopher and his thirst for experiences and zest for life are truly admirable. His time is beautifully visualized too, through Everett Aison’s charcoal and watercolour pictures that have an appropriately stark quality about them.
This book should delight both those familiar with New York winters and those who, like Arthur as the story starts, have no experience of it. To appreciate Arthur’s spontaneous joy in the face of the challenges he meets, readers/listeners would probably need to be at least eight and going right through to ninety eight.

Two other recent reissues of neo classics  for slightly older readers from the same publisher, both of which I loved as a child are the wonderful:

The 13 Clocks
James Thurber and Neil Gaiman
This fairy tale of a book is one  every child should have in his or her collection.
as is:
The Pushcart War
Jean Merrill and Ronni Solbert

And finally a ghostly read:

The Last of the Spirits
Chris Priestly
Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Chris Priestly tells a chilling ghostly tale, one that essentially takes the Dickens original to another dimension. We are transported to the Christmas Eve streets of Victorian London where we meet, cold and starving, teenager Sam and his younger sister, Lizzie. Having begged an old businessman for money to buy food, Sam is filled with rage and hatred at the contemptuous sneer he receives from him (you can guess the character’s identity) and swears vengeance. He is then visited by warning spirits telling/showing him the possible outcome, should he choose to follow that path of vengeance. The question is: will Sam be able to resist his initial urge?
Yes, this book is fairly short and can easily be read at a single sitting – indeed the power of the story drove me to do so – but its haunting power grips me still.
Powerfully compelling: but read it yourself first before offering it to anyone under eleven.

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